Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday May 17, 2010 @03:51PM
from the check's-in-the-mail dept.

Pickens writes "eWeek reports that Microsoft has announced it will pay $200 million to settle a patent-infringement suit against it by VirnetX, which alleged that the software giant infringed on its patents related to communications, virtualization and collaboration technology. This payment represents a substantial markup from the $105.7 million that a Texas jury awarded in March when it found that Microsoft had infringed on two US patents held by VirnetX. Microsoft will license VirnetX technology for its own products. 'We believe that this successful resolution of our litigation with Microsoft will allow us to focus on the upcoming pilot system that will showcase VirnetX's automatic Virtual Private Network technology,' says Kendall Larsen, VirnetX Holding Corp.'s CEO. East Texas courts have a reputation as a good place to pursue intellectual property suits against larger corporations. While many of these cases seem to be settled out of court — or dismissed as totally frivolous — recent lawsuits such as those leveled by i4i and VirnetX are notable for at least extending to the Big Judgment phase."

Yea, is it just me, or does microsoft seem to constantly be getting caught for stealing code? It's almost as if they could care less what the license says and just include it in their products because if they get caught they can afford to settle the dispute, but if they don't they get away with stealing and making a profit.

perhaps there should be someone (not a MS employee) hired to review code to see just how many infringements their are...

Requires them to? They could keep the technology under wraps as a Trade Secret, only disclosing the details to those who are willing to sign NDA's for it. This is, incidentally how software companies worked for literally decades and how many companies still work today. You won't find a patent application for the Coca-Cola recipe for instance.

Requires them to? They could keep the technology under wraps as a Trade Secret, only disclosing the details to those who are willing to sign NDA's for it. This is, incidentally how software companies worked for literally decades and how many companies still work today. You won't find a patent application for the Coca-Cola recipe for instance.

I'm not loving your business plan. The problem with trade secrets is that prior art doesn't apply to non-public inventions. If someone else invents & patents it, I lose my right to do business selling my own invention, just because you came up with it second but decided to use the evil patent system while I remained pure.

Patenting everything gives you direct defense against someone else trying to trump you, plus the ability to counter-sue or threaten other companies who harass you, plus the ability

I wish you weren't right, but you hit the nail on the head. The system is broken and despite how it gets my blood boiling I find it difficult to blame corporate entities from taking advantage of the situation. IMHO the solution is to start recruiting people to the patent office that have a background in software. Maybe I'm a dreamer but I'd also like to see the patents written in plainer English rather than in the convoluted techno-jargon that makes swiping a screen to unlock a phone seem as complicated

The interrelated quality of ideas makes it very difficult to draw boundaries. That combined with the absolutism of this "winner take all" award system where one entity gets all the rewards while everyone else who was working towards similar or identical ideas not only gets nothing but may be forced to abandon years of effort makes for very ugly, expensive fights. It makes the stakes unnecessarily high. The thought behind the patent syste

They patent everything because the system requires them to. You should blame the whole patent system instead.

Yes, but who is this "you" that you speak of?

When nobody with the voice in the software industry is speaking against the patent system, it is hard to be heard. In fact most are speaking for it not against it.Maybe the "you", and the blame that goes with it, should also be directed towards the big players that keep feeding the system.

Let's blame the people who lobbied for it too, like the ones who work for Microsoft. Let's also blame the groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that push US-style patent laws on third-world countries in exchange for medicine.

The "system requires them to" part is true, but, nonetheless, Microsoft (together with many other large corps) has filed several amicus curiae briefs in support of software patents in relevant court cases in U.S.

For someone who's been around as long as you have, you sure are ignorant. Microsoft has indeed sued other companies for patents [wikipedia.org]. It was covered quite a bit on Slashdot at the time. Don't go spreading the misinformation that Microsoft is a benign patent owner.

Personally I wouldn't push for money if I won a case against them, I would ask that Microsoft displays my company's name (if I had one) in big letters next to the product name. Free advertising and makes the point that it wasn't Microsoft's idea originally.

Look at the VirnetX website and look at the products http://www.virnetx.com/products.php [virnetx.com] it has very little other than patent licensing! While they do have a few real products, VirnetX is more or less a patent troll.

It may be worth nothing that 200M is not *in addition to* the 100M from an earlier lawsuit:
From TFA:
"In a joint statement Monday, VirnetX and Microsoft announced that both lawsuits would be dismissed as part of the $200 million settlement. Microsoft will also license the VirnetX patents, the companies said."
The summary doesn't seem intentionally misleading, but I did not gather this to be the case.

Microsoft, and IBM and everybody else who is in any kind of position to be IP-trolled should _really_ be arguing that all software patents are invalid. So what if it thus invalidates their "investment" in software patents. They only spent that money to "repel boarders" in the IP wars anyway.

Funny thing that, the more you talk about patent trolling the more you get to analogies like "repel boarders". It's almost like "IP" stands for "Intellectual Piracy".

Remember who was and is behind SCO? Remember who has been constantly threatening to sue Linux for infringing on its patents?

200 million is PEANUTS for MS, a very low price to pay for making sure nobody else can afford to enter the market. Wanna bet that 200 million goes to pursue further lawsuits?

MS will call for patent reform roughly at the same it stops with FUD and breaking standards. Software patents work for Microsoft. The occasional payoff is just the price for their way of doing business. If softwa

You bring up a good point. I see the settlement as Microsoft validiating the enforcability of patents. They get to go on record as being okay with paying to license patented technology. In the future when they go after other companies for patent infringement, they can say something to the effect of, "We didn't make the system, and in fact it hurts us too. Remember when we paid $200 million?"

Sure, you could settle, proclaim victory of "IP" (whatever than means), and move on to the next patent troll lawsuit.

OR, alternatively, you could bring out the issues publicly, critique the way the system works, use your political weight to improve the environment, call lobbyists, recommend changes in legislation, and proactively make it better for everyone. When people see one of the biggest players in the industry raising these issues, they'll catch on. Legislators will notice, lobbyists will take up thos

Their analysis doesn't work because a patent suit filed in district X is not likely to be the same as a patent suit filed in district Y. If I have an open and shut case, I'll probably file my suit wherever it is most convenient or cheapest for me to do so. If I have a case that I feel I may or may not win, I'll shop around for the district that balances my chances of winning with the additional expenses. If I intend to make my entire enterprise out of suing other people for patent infringement, I'll set

Nice to see Microsoft being bitten in the ass by the same patent troll strategy they are adopting.

The much-needed fix to the software patent problem will only happen after the big companies repeatedly pay out more through patent enforcement than they gain from it.

The real problem is big companies, especially Microsoft have invested so much in filing millions of non-innovative, frivolous, obviously prior, stolen and open-ended patents, and have enough lawyers, lobbyists and paid-off politicians in their poc

That depends on your definition of troll. They don't demand money for many patents (VFAT being a notable example), but they definitely use the threat of patent infringement suits to discourage competitors.

Microsoft so far are one of the few companies that don't patent troll. They tend to use their portfolio as defensive patents.

Bullshit. Microsoft of course uses their patent portfolio offensively. The reason you don't see these things go to court is because they are so good at it. They have patent cross-license agreements with all the big players, and none of the little players have the resources to fight them. Microsoft has a huge patent portfolio.

If Microsoft wants money from you, they can come with a huge stack of patents and an army of lawyers and say: "Look, we think you violate this patent, but if you think you don't, here are another two dozen you probably violate. And these are the dozen lawyers that are going to tie your company and your employees up in knots for the next ten years with depositions and court dates, keep you from shipping your products, and give you bad press. Now, for just 5% of your revenue, you can save yourself all this trouble. Do the math: even if you eventually win it's cheaper. Any questions?"

The only people moderately immune from this are open source developers, because they can basically tell Microsoft to put their cards on the table or go f*ck themselves.

Microsoft doesn't really care much about the $200m; yeah, it's going to dent their income a little, but they get something back for it: the technology cannot be used by open source software.

And in this case, that might matter. The patent is on a simple way of establishing VPNs. There are lots of applications for VPNs, but establishing them in the past has been pretty tough, so people haven't been using it much. I don't think the method described in the patent is particularly deep, but as far as patents g

What they are doing is creating a weapon.
They won't go after Red Hat directly,
so they will loose a bunch of lawsuits against patent trolls,
and let the trolls try to go after Red Hat in hope that
Red Hat won't survive the multiple lawsuits.
Then they will have convince the word that Linux
is fragile because stupid software patents.

I've always loved how at the end of a patent dispute, the company who's lost to the patent holder, agrees "to license the 'technology'. After the money is paid out, I wonder if there's really anything that gets passed back... Code samples? Flowcharts? Theory of operations? Punch cards? I would guess in most cases zip gets transferred - and not the compression algorithm...

Company1 - "Yeah, hi, this is Bob at company X - we recently licensed your technology that allows people to use a mouse to interact with a computation unit in a way that allows the computation unit to perform a useful task. We'd like to get the relevant documentation?"

Company2 - "Um, docs. Huh - never thought of that - I mean it's never come up... Wow, I guess you could read the patent application - that's the only docs we got. BTW, would you like to purchase rights to allow the mouse to instruct the computation unit to perform a useless task? We got a special going on this week for that..."

I wonder if there's really anything that gets passed back... Code samples? Flowcharts? Theory of operations? Punch cards? I would guess in most cases zip gets transferred - and not the compression algorithm...

It's IP. If you were thinking about anything tangible, or even sensible (as in, detectable to the senses), UR DOIN IT RONG (to quote Ceiling Cat).

The only thing that passes back is permission. And perhaps the opportunity for a little revenge.

Patents are granted only on the basis that the inventor's investment must be protected from competition by competitors who have money to compete without the burden of paying to invent. There's no way the inventor spent over $200M to invent their invention. Now they have recouped all their investment, and a lot of profit.

So they don't need a patent to protect them from unfair competition anymore. Their patent should expire, and they should compete solely based on their product's superiority in the market.

Patents are granted for something novel, non-obvious, filed in time, and useful. A patent grants the right to the owner to prevent others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing the claimed invention. Contrary to popular belief, a patent does not grant the owner the right to practice the invention. Why? Simply because this might require the use of technology patented by someone else!